• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.1069-1089
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• 2015

This paper investigates the limits and efficacies of the Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) material for strengthening mid-rise RC buildings against seismic actions. Turkey, the region of the highest seismic risk in Europe, is chosen as the case-study country, the building stock of which consists in its vast majority of mid-rise RC residential and/or commercial buildings. Strengthening with traditional methods is usually applied in most projects, as ordinary construction materials and no specialized workmanship are required. However, in cases of tight time constraints, architectural limitations, durability issues or higher demand for ductile performance, FRP material is often opted for since the most recent Turkish Earthquake Code allows engineers to employ this advanced-technology product to overcome issues of inadequate ductility or shear capacity of existing RC buildings. The paper compares strengthening of a characteristically typical mid-rise Turkish RC building by two methods, i.e., traditional column jacketing and FRP strengthening, evaluating their effectiveness with respect to the requirements of the Turkish Earthquake Code. The effect of FRP confinement is explicitly taken into account in the numerical model, unlike the common procedure followed according to which the demand on un-strengthened members is established and then mere section analyses are employed to meet the additional demands.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.297-319
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• 2013

Two destructive earthquakes occurred on October 23 and November 9, 2011 in Van province of Turkey. The damage in residential units shows significant deviation from the expectation of decreasing damage with increasing distance to epicenter. The most damaged settlement Ercis has the same distance to the epicenter with Muradiye, where no damage occurred while relatively less damage observed in Van having half distance. These three cities seem to have resembling soil conditions. If the damages are evaluated: joint failures and insufficient lap splice lengths are observed to be the main causes of the total collapses in RC buildings. Additionally, low concrete strength, reinforcement detailing mistakes, soft story, heavy overhang, pounding and short columns are among other damage reasons. Examples of damages due to non-structural elements are also given. Remarkable points about seismic damages are: collapsed buildings with shear-walls, heavily damaged buildings despite adequate concrete strength due to detailing mistakes, undamaged two-story adobe buildings close to totally collapsed RC ones and undamaged structural system in buildings with heavily damaged non-structural elements. On the contrary of the common belief that buildings with shear-walls are immune to total collapse among civil engineers, collapse of Gedikbulak primary school is a noteworthy example.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.52 no.5
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• pp.543-555
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• 2024

This study examines the seismic vulnerability of vertically irregular reinforced concrete (RC) frame buildings, focusing on the effectiveness of retrofitting techniques such as rocking walls (RWs) in mitigating soft story mechanisms. Utilizing a seven-story residential apartment as a prototype in a high-seismicity urban area, this research performs detailed nonlinear simulations to evaluate both regular and irregular structures, both before and after retrofitting. Pushover and nonlinear time history analyses were conducted using OpenSees software, with a suite of nine ground motion records to capture diverse seismic scenarios. The findings indicate that retrofitting with RWs significantly improves seismic performance: for instance, roof displacements at the Collapse Prevention (CP) level decreased by up to 23% in the irregular structure with retrofitting compared to its non-retrofitted counterpart. Additionally, interstory drift ratios were more uniform post-retrofit, with Drift Concentration Factor (DCF) values approaching 1.0 across all performance levels, reflecting reduced variability in seismic response. The global ductility of the retrofitted buildings improved, with displacement ductility ratios increasing by up to 29%. These results underscore the effectiveness of RWs in enhancing global ductility, mitigating soft story failures, and providing a more predictable deformation pattern during seismic events. The study thus provides valuable insights into the robustness and cost-effectiveness of using rocking walls for retrofitting irregular RC buildings.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.285-292
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• 2020

The methodology classifying structural types of concrete buildings in the existing seismic fragility functions is too simple to estimate the fragility of existing residential buildings and neighborhood living facilities, especially those below five stories. Their structural types are dependent on information contained in the building register such as main use, total floor area, story, permission date, and first story floor area of the individual building. All of this information is not considered for classifying types in the existing functions; therefore, the goal of this study was to suggest a methodology that classifies structural types of concrete buildings by utilizing such information. The results of this study showed that the suggested methodology can classify structural types better than the existing methodology. Nevertheless, there is still a need to simplify the methodology because fragility estimation demands quickness rather than accuracy.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.163-170
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• 2017

The need for eco-friendly building materials such as engineered wood has increased to reduce carbon emissions. Although the range and height of engineered wood buildings are gradually increasing in North America and Europe, engineered wood is mainly used for low-rise residential buildings in Korea. In order to reduce carbon emissions more, therefore, it needs to expand the use of engineered wood by applying it to various buildings with different uses or more stories. With this background, the aim of this study is to investigate the applicability of engineered wood for 9-story office buildings. Since a 9-story building with engineered wood only is not allowed in KBC, an example building has RC ordinary shear walls as the lateral force resisting system while engineered wood is only used for gravity load resisting moment frames. Another example building is also used for comparison where both lateral and gravity load resisting systems are designed by RC. The applicability of engineered wood is investigated by comparing the seismic performance and the amount of carbon emission of both buildings. The result shows that the seismic performance of both buildings was not significantly different while the amount of carbon emission of the engineered wood building was much less then the RC building. Based on this result, engineered wood is sufficiently applicable to 9-story office buildings even though it still needs to pay attention to the shear design of reinforce concrete walls.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.87 no.4
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• pp.347-361
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• 2023

This research aims to assess the behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) residential buildings when moment-resisting frames (MRFs) are used as the lateral resisting system. This investigation was conducted using MIDAS Gen v.19.0. Buildings with various plan footprints (Square, Rectangular, Circular, Triangular, and Plus-Shaped), and different heights (15 m, 30 m, 45 m, and 60 m) are investigated. The defined load cases, the equivalent static lateral load pattern, and the response spectrum function were defined as stated by the American Standard (ASCE 7-16), the 1997 Uniform Building Code (UBC97), the Egyptian Code for Loads (ECP-201), and the European Standard (EC8). Extensive comparisons of the results obtained by the different codes (including the story displacement, the story drift, and the base shear) were undertaken; to assess the response of moment-resisting multi-story framed buildings under lateral loads. The results revealed that, for all study cases under consideration, both ECP-201 and EC8 gave smaller base shear, displacement, and drift by one third to one fourth, around one fourth, around one fifth, respectively for both the ELF and RSA methods if compared to ASCE 7-16 and UBC97.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.301-308
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• 2024

During earthquakes, buildings can suffer damage ranging from minor to severe, potentially leading to collapses and resulting in loss of life and property. To mitigate these risks, it is essential to evaluate the seismic performance of buildings. Current seismic performance evaluation techniques require significant time as they focus on individual buildings. Therefore, there is a need to develop evaluation techniques that can be applied on a regional scale. This study proposes a single-degree-of-freedom model with a nonlinear shear spring to assess the seismic performance and plan the reinforcement of reinforced concrete residential buildings. The nonlinear shear spring, defined by the T-SR-μ parameter, is used to simulate the nonlinear response of the structure. By applying 100-PEER ground motions to this model, the seismic performance of the buildings was evaluated based on the maximum inter-story drift ratio response. The applicability of the proposed technique was confirmed by comparing it with detailed models, where both models assessed the seismic performance of the buildings at similar levels. This results demonstrate that the proposed method can accurately predict the seismic performance of actual buildings.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.103-111
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• 2018

This study examines the seismic failure of RC low-rise building structures having irregularities at the ground story during the 15 November 2017 Pohang, Korea, earthquake, $M_w=5.4$, which is the second strongest since the government began monitoring them in 1978 in South Korea. Some 2,000 private houses were damaged or destroyed in this earthquake. Particularly, serious damage to the piloti story of RC low-rise residential building structures of fewer than five stories was observed within 3 km of the epicenter with brittle shear failure of columns and walls due to severe torsional behavior. Buildings below six stories constructed before 2005 did not have to comply with seismic design requirements, so confinement detailing of columns and walls also led to inadequate performance. However, some buildings constructed after 2005 were damaged at the flexible side of the piloti story due to the high torsional irregularity. Based on these results, this study focuses on the problems of the seismic torsion design approach in current building codes.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.337-348
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• 2023

Shear wall is commonly used as a lateral force resisting system of concrete mid-rise and high-rise buildings, but it brings challenges in providing relatively large space throughout the building height. For this reason, the structure system where the upper structure with bearing, non-bearing and/or shear walls that sits on top of a transfer plate system supported by widely spaced columns at the lower stories is preferred in some regions, particularly in low to moderate seismic regions in Asia. A thick reinforced concrete (RC) plate has often been used as a transfer system, along with RC transfer girders; however, the RC plate becomes very thick for tall buildings. Applying the post-tensioning (PT) technique to RC plates can effectively reduce the thickness and reinforcement as an economical design method. Currently, a simplified model is used for numerical modeling of PT transfer plate, which does not consider the interaction of the plate and the upper structure. To observe the actual behavior of PT transfer plate under seismic loads, it is necessary to model whole parts of the structure and tendons to precisely include the interaction and the secondary effect of PT tendons in the results. This research evaluated the seismic behavior of shear wall-type residential buildings with PT transfer plates for the condition that PT tendons are included or excluded in the modeling. Three-dimensional finite element models were developed, which includes prestressing tendon elements, and response spectrum analyses were carried out to evaluate seismic forces. Two buildings with flat-shape and L-shape plans were considered, and design forces of shear walls and transfer columns for a system with and without PT tendons were compared. The results showed that, in some cases, excluding PT tendons from the model leads to an unrealistic estimation of the demands for shear walls sit on transfer plate and transfer columns due to excluding the secondary effect of PT tendons. Based on the results, generally, the secondary effect reduces shear force demand and axial-flexural demands of transfer columns but increases the shear force demand of shear walls. The results of this study suggested that, in addition to the effect of PT on the resistance of transfer plate, it is necessary to include PT tendons in the modeling to consider its effect on force demand.

• KIEAE Journal
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.3-8
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• 2007

Recently, the structural system of public residential buildings has been changed from the reinforced concrete (RC) wall system to the (PC) wall and moment resisting systems. Thus, it is important to develop the suitable wall system in accordance with the trend of the modern structural system. This paper presents the basic study on the suitable boundary wall in high-rise buildings. The research also demonstrates the evaluation results on sound characteristics in the aspect of sound insulation. The evaluation of sound insulation capability for the commercialized wall structure was conducted based on literature survey while the measurement of sound insulation capability for the light-weght EPP concrete was performed in according to KS F2808 in laboratory. The main objective of this research is to propose the most suitable dry wall system as a sound insulation structure through the comparison and analysis of frequency characteristics and weight-acoustic attenuation.